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Addressing Housing Needs- "After the Projects"

I’m back to the blog, after a refreshing post-election break.

American Radio Works is running an interesting program by Chris Farrell and Laurie Stern called, After the Projects. It’s a look at the movement in Chicago (and other cities across the country) away from isolated public housing developments in high-poverty areas and towards mixed-income housing and Section 8 vouchers as ways to house poor residents. The program takes listeners into a new mixed-income development and addresses the uncertain progress it’s making to improve the lives of residents of former high-rise projects on Chicago’s South and West Sides.

Listening to After the Projects, it’s clear that more support and innnovation is needed to create opportunities for public housing residents. There are many combinations of issues to address around finding employment, getting job training, and education. Many market rate residents resent assisted tenants and outreach between the groups is not apparently strong. There may be architectural issues that need to be refined. More experiments combining housing programs and social services, employing different strategies for success and choices for residents between programs will be necessary. The radio program doesn’t have the answers, but it does raise worthwhile questions.

I’ll be heading out to the University of Chicago this Wednesday, November for a Brick by Brick documentary screening and discussion sponsored by Campus Progress and the Organization of Black Students, focused on housing issues. I’ll be joined by Bernie Kleina, executive director of the HOPE Fair Housing Center. I’m looking forward to hearing more about Chicago’s public housing since the Gautreaux case, which started a national movement to replace high-rises through the experience of court-ordered program that moved families out of large developments to low-poverty areas around the city’s metropolitan housing market. Mr. Kleina will doubtless have a wealth of experience to share on fair housing generally.

Since funding for housing assistance has dwindled under the present administration, progress made in addressing poverty and highly segregated housing patterns has also slowed dramatically. Adding to the problem, enforcement of existing fair housing laws has languished on a federal level. Hopefully, more attention and enforcement will be forthcoming under the leadership of the next President.